Quality requirements for cultural web sites:

the Archives profile

Pierluigi FeliciatiUniversity of Macerata (IT)MINERVA eC WP5 (EU)

Trieste – IIAS CourseOctober 19th, 2007

what about cultural Web quality?

The Web has promoted an increasing proliferation of on-line cultural applications, together with informations and contents coming from any source.

Almost every organisation or institution or initiative or person today wants to be on the Web, to mark its existence, to promote itself, to disseminate its contents and its activities all over the connected world.

Quality must be ensured for the delivering of cultural content by cultural institutions, but quality is a very broad, generic and subjective concept

Quality has particular resonance in the cultural sector because of the importance and value of the material being presented on cultural websites.

what about cultural Web?

The increasing importance of web as the principal medium to communicate and to share information, may bring some risks, that cultural professionals must face as a primary challenge

As use of the Internet as an information access medium continues to grow, exposure to culture via the Internet becomes more and more prevalent.

As the Internet is used more and more for education and research, the quality of online content becomes more and more important.

what about cultural Web?

The key messages to create quality cultural web are: – Quality must be planned into a website from the

start of the project– The user is critical – involve him at every stage – Relationships with other online resources

(interoperability) and with future resources (long term preservation) must be considered

With proper planning, and building on the information, examples, standards and guidelines available, creating a high-quality website need not be much more difficult, expensive or slow than creating a lower-quality one.

Minerva and Web quality

The european working group Identification of user needs, contents and quality criteria for Cultural Web Applications worked since 2002 :

• To define quality criteria for the digitised content • To encourage the adoption of quality criteria for developing

cultural and scientific web applications• To support the initiatives launched by the European

Commission with the provision of national digital content• To encourage training actions on cultural sites, to promote

knowledge of multicultural issuesall MINERVA tools and handbooks are freely downloadble

from the website http://www.minervaeurope.org

Minerva and Web quality

MilestonesMarch 2002 Beginning of MinervaFebruary 2003 First Deliverable on qualityNovember 2003 Handbook for quality in cultural Web sites

Improving quality for citizens (en, it) 10 quality principles (ar, ee, en, el, fr, hu, it)

2004 Museo&Web planning kit (en, fr, it)2005 Quality Principles for Cultural Websites: a Handbook

(ar, ee, en, el, fr, hu, it)2006-2008 Minerva eC Dynamic Action Plan – new planning

kits for schools, preservation offices, libraries, archives - dissemination of Museo&Web CMS - a new Handbook on User needs and satisfaction evaluation (June 08, Lubljiana)

what about cultural Web quality?

“A Web site is a collection of information that the user perceives to be a single unit”

(W.Arms, Digital libraries, chapt. 2)

A Cultural Web Application (CWA) can be considered to be every Web application where the contents deal with cultural heritage, and where at least one of those aims are realised:– supplying and spreading cultural informations– working as an instrument for education and

scientific research

CREATOR

USER

CONTENTS

contents quality•SCIENTIFIC QUALITY•TRUST & MISSION•GOAL-based planning

web quality•ACCESSIBILITY

•USABILITY•SHARED

SOLUTIONSpatterns method

DL & WEB

DEVELOPER

interactions...

A goal-based planning

A cultural entity (person, organisation, institution or a group of different entities joined to build a cultural product)could plan its own website following a goal-based planning method. The Minerva Quality handbook proposed since 2003 a set of possible 12 goals for cultural web:

reach transparency on the identity reach transparency on the application have efficiency in the sector networks presentate standards and regulations spread cultural content support cultural tourism offer educational services offer services for scientific research offer services to professionals offer services for reservations and e-commerce promote web communities

The 10 MINERVA quality principles

The ten principles for cultural web quality are short and provide little guidance to how they are to be implemented or how to assess whether or not a website complies with them. The ten principles are aimed at cultural websites – those concerned with museums, libraries, archives and other cultural institutions. However, the principles are quite generic and can be applied to almost any website.The Quality Principles Handbook, published in 2004 and freely available in 7 languages, aims to add supporting information to each of the principles.

The 10 MINERVA quality principles

A good quality cultural Website must be:

1. Transparentmust clearly state the identity and purpose of the Website, as

well as the organisation responsible for its management2. Effectivemust select, digitise, author, present and validate content to

create an effective Website for users3. Maintainedmust implement quality of service policy guidelines to ensure

that the Website is maintained and updated at an appropriate level

4. Accessiblemust be focused on the need to serve all members of the user

community, even if technologically or phisically disable

The 10 MINERVA quality principles

5. User-centredmust take in consideration the importance of user consultation,

involvement and contribution at every stage6. Responsiveresponsiveness is concerned with the ability for the site and the site

owners to respond to user questions and suggestions7. Multi-lingualaccess to culture should be universal. Language can be an

important barrier to access, so there must be considered that the web audience for the cultural material goes beyond linguistic and national boundaries

8. Interoperableweb quality interaction is beyond the individual Website, so it must

be considered to interface it with other cultural Websites and with other services, such as cultural portals, using standards.

The 10 MINERVA quality principles

9. ManagedThe primary concern of this principle is to ensure that due care and

attention have been paid to non-technical, non-cultural issues such as intellectual property rights (IPR) management and privacy. The the ethical and legal aspects of Website provision must be taken in consideration.

10. PreservedThe rapid evolution of technologies has the consequence that

Websites created today are likely to be inaccessible in the longer-term future Cultural material is likely to be as valuable in future years’ time as it is today, with only few exceptions. This makes a long term preservation strategy a critical part of any cultural Website and a key quality indicator.

The quality principles Handbook

The Principles Priority Matrix explores the relationships between the various stages of a Website life-cycle and the ten quality principles. It identifies the most important principles for each stage of the Website life-cycle.

The proposed stages are:1. Website Planning2. Website Design3. Content Selection4. Digitisation process 5. Storage and preservation of digital masters6. Metadata capture7. Website implementation 8. Online publication / Go live9. Ongoing maintenance

The quality principles Handbook

Here is the proposed matrix between principles an stages, with 1-3 priority value

the Archives profile

Archives The division within an organization

responsible for maintaining the organization's records of enduring value.

An organization which collects the archives of individuals, families, or other organizations; a collecting repository.

(from the SAA Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology)

- An organization or part of, public or private, accessioning, appraising, describing and keeping [archival] material and making them accessible to the public

(ISIAH standard draft, Glossary, http://www.ica.org/en/node/38425)

the Archives profilewhat contents?

records, documents, materials of some media conserved as evidence of facts or because of their historical interest

they represent the fixed memory of human interactions, of juridical rights, of our forms of organization, of individual or social lives

to ensure public access to such sources of public memory, the archival institutions collect, preserve and create ad hoc finding aids

So, archival contents are descriptions, interpretations or reproductions of archives

the Archives profile

Contents preserved by archival organizations (Archives) connect juridical and administrative field with culture and are therefore visible both to academic world and to civil society.

The first archival Web sites go back as far as the dawn of the WWW and UNESCO soon created a world level portal dedicated to the archival sector.

There is still great need for the widest possible co-operation among Archives, particularly concerning the diffusion of descriptive standards and good practices.

The Web has quickly become a particularly effective tool for Archives’ mission, through individual archives sites, multi-institute informative systems and thematic or territorial portals or digital libraries.

the Archives profilespecific contents

In Italy, Francesco Bonaini declared 150 years ago that the person who enters an archive must look for institutions (i.e. creators), not for subjects.

So, describing archives traditionally is providing information about the records, their creators and historical context and about the available finding aids (needful for a remote or direct access).The ICA Standards ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF) guide archivists to create descriptive records, onnect those 3 domains of information (fonds, creators and finding aids) and to provide the necessary tools for browsing among their complex and multidimensional relationships

the Archives profilethe users point of view

Archives’ live users can be categorized essentially in 2 typologies:

• Browsers (users with a research plan) and have to browse archives, verifying on documents their theories. They are good finding aids readers, are interested in archives creators, like to browse finding aids, include and exclude search paths, can appreciate the lack of records as useful informations. They know that archives need time.

• Searchers (users who just look for specific records/informations). They have no theories, want quick results and don’t want to read complex finding aids, would love miraculous fishing tools.

the Archives profilearchival professional mission

The XXIst century mission of archival professionals seems to be the governance of the transition from the traditional way of giving public access to archives in reference rooms, with the help of archivists: personalised - individual – measured - mediate - analogic -flexible - sacerdotal

to the new way, based on ICT, WWW and on international standards: faceless - anonymous - general – measureles digital - remote - automatic - secular

the Archives profilefuture tasks

the digital challenge for Archives professional should be the creation of good models for effective user interfaces and user personalisations in order to:

• keep as primary the context informations of archival materials

• help browsing the complexity according to different users requirements/profile

• preserve the scientific value of informations and of their connections

• provide training e-tools, thematic paths, references• provide a good balance between searching and

browsing

the Archives profilefuture tasks

some possible future tasks for archivists could be:

• collections of good practices in archival ICT• user requirements/interaction frameworks• thematic panel groups to involve users• collecting consolidated solutions to common

problems in common contexts (patterns)• terminology tools and ontologies to make

user interfaces easier• exchange practices without feudal

protection...

Archivio&Web

A step further on the Museo&Web package

Museo&Web is: A planning Kit to build a Quality Website, planning

its architecture and realising it A basis for the Museo&Web Open Source CMS Intended to be used as a reference model for small

and medium sized museums The model was adapted to other categories of

public cultural institutions, as libraries, schools and ARCHIVES

Archivio&Web

Archivio&Web aims to represent a reference model for the archival institutions who are planning to create their own website or update the existing one.

For archival institution, again, we mean An organization or part of, public or private, accessioning, appraising, describing and keeping [archival] material and making them accessible to the public (ISIAH)

For the technical issues in a web site creation (architecture, communication, managing, accessibility, usability, interoperability and copyright) Archivio&Web refers to the TUTORIAL section of Museo&Web.

Archivio&Web

The suggested architetcture for an archive website has to be taken as a proposal, not for a strict model

One of its aims could be the standardisation of a sort of archival web language, in order to help users to use easily many different sites

archival web, even more than the rest of the web, must not be based on stickiness, because our users have to be helped to find their records even out of our site

Some items of the website map are presented here in red ink, to mark their importance

Archivio&Web

HOME PAGE

The home page is the main entrance to the Web site and here the organisation of contents and services and the browsing system must be immediately clear. The structure of the home page should differ from all the others, even if some elements are common to the whole site.The home page should contain:

mission statement (The topic of the web site, The main contents of the site, The organisation responsible for running the site, Destined users)

logo, part of the “heading” and common to all pages of the site

announcements and news of the site

Archivio&Web

THE ARCHIVAL INSTITUTIONTHE ARCHIVAL INSTITUTIONThis section should present all the elements of the

institution identity, i.e. its mission, foundation, history, activities, the seat or location, its organisation, structure and opening times: Location / building(s) History Officers in charge Current activities

Projects Arrangements Publications

Opening times Policy and legislative framework

Archivio&Web

ARCHIVAL HOLDINGSARCHIVAL HOLDINGSThis section should contain the description, analysis

and awareness of the holdings available in the archival istitution. The contents could be organised according to level of depth of information: Finding aids and research tools Digital resources Collecting policies Access conditions and requirements

Archivio&Web

SERVICES and FACILITIES SERVICES and FACILITIES This section should give information on services to the

public. It could be possible to offer buy or download services on-line and advisable to list phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Care should be taken to ensure that staff are qualified to answer quickly and consistently.

Reading room(s) Reproduction Library Education Training Forms Download

Archivio&Web

WEB RESOURCES WEB RESOURCES [or LINKS, or GATEWAY]This page should show a selection of resources in internet

and pertinent to the heritage conserved in the archival istitution, to the user profiles known, to other archival istitutions, etc.

EVENTS, NEWS EVENTS, NEWS A Web Site is a continuously evolving entity and may need

to inform users of additions, be they documents, press releases, announcements, events etc. In many cases, such as publication of laws, regulations, explanatory circulars and so on, informing users is indispensable. Newsletter (keeps users informed on updates on the site

and on interesting items associated with the themes of the site)

Archivio&Web

HEADINGHEADINGall the distinctive elements of the site identity of the site

METANAVIGATIONMETANAVIGATIONhome, site search, contact, site map, guide, feedback...

FOOTERFOOTERCopyright of the site, authorship rights, protection of privacy,

release of personal data, dates of creation and of last update, URL, lik to “credits” page

MEMBERS AREA AND REGISTRATIONMEMBERS AREA AND REGISTRATIONfor the community of users, may include newsletter, participation

in discussion lists, access to reserved sections where users are asked for an identity. Login may require personal informations

The web quality tools

The Archivio&Web prototype (IT) may be downloaded in

http://www.otebac.it/siti/realizzare/direttive/modelli/archivio.html

Museo&Web, oteher prototype, CMS .. inhttp://www.otebac.it

MINERVA tools and documents inhttp://www.minervaeurope.org

Thank you for your attention!pierluigi.feliciati@unimc.it